Peter Hitchens is right that there is no more anti-Semitism on the Labour Left than anywhere else, right that Shami Chakrabarti is an excellent addition to the House of Lords, right that we need to expand our rail links to the great airports of the near Continent rather than build new runways here, right about not adopting Central European Time, right that the sixtieth anniversary of Suez ought to cause us to reconsider our insistence on antagonising Russia, right that the Ashers are "rather loudly Christian", and right that the ruling against them was not what the Equality Act intended or specified.

If you forgot your house key, you could go
next door and borrow theirs. The keys were identical.

It was the same if you
got into trouble – a neighbour gave you a clip round the ear and told your dad
down the pit. Our estates policed themselves.

You never saw the force, but we
always respected them.

When the strike began in 1984, I
was 35 and had worked at Barnburgh colliery for seven years.

With every year
that passes, fewer and fewer miners will live to see the day we get to the
truth about events on 18 June that year.

It was a
red-hot day.

We were walking down the old tip when we saw thousands of police
marching in formation.

One mate, who had served in the military, believed they
were soldiers.

We helped a policeman remove some stone that had fallen on to
the road.

He said that it was to allow vehicles carrying injured pickets to
pass.

But instead of ambulances, more police came galloping through on
horseback.

We were in T-shirts and they were fully armed.

We ran
into a playing field, where hundreds of pickets had been penned in.

The wagons
came for the coal and, as I reached the front, I was arrested for obstruction.

Later, at Rotherham police station, they held the pickets in a quadrangle – men
bleeding from broken limbs, with cracked skulls, bandaging their own wounds
with T-shirts – and I was charged with unlawful assembly.

My wife
and I attended the trial for the first 15 miners and, when it collapsed, went
on holiday.

I was in a bar in north Wales when the news showed the lads I
should have been on trial with leaving court.

The charges had been dropped but
the damage endures.

My family became infected with what I have called a disease
– a distrust of the police that spans generations.

But this week, the
government has the opportunity to turn the page on these years.

Last
month, the home secretary, Amber Rudd, asked me what an inquiry would mean after
all these years.

I’m now a grandfather and I want my grandchildren to be able
to trust the police, as I was brought up to do, I said.

She nodded.

But if the
government fails to get to the full truth about Hillsborough, Orgreave and the
South Yorkshire police, then my community may never trust the police again.

Saturday, 29 October 2016

Who are the baddies in I, Daniel Blake? More to the point, what are they? Are they likely to be Tories? Hardly!

Until Jeremy Corbyn came along, people like that were the only ones left in the Labour Party in any numbers.

Therefore, there are now two Labour Parties.

One is the party of Daniel Blake and of those who side with him.

The other is the party of his persecutors, the party that invented benefit sanctions, the party that devised the Work Capability Assessment that is now being discontinued by the Conservative Party.

One is the party that wants to halt arms sales to Saudi Arabia.

The other is the party that not only refuses to vote for such a halt, but which, in the case of Stephen Kinnock, tweets that we are somehow morally obliged to supply those arms, siding so explicitly with Saudi Arabia in Yemen that one wonders why he did not vote with the Government.

One is the party that wants to enact the NHS Reinstatement Bill, which is the reason why even David Owen wants Jeremy Corbyn to become Prime Minister.

The other is the party that broke up and privatised the NHS in England, but nowhere else, in the first place.

One is the party that wants my friend Barnaby Marder to remove the failed racist rabble-rouser, Zac Goldsmith, from Parliament.

The other is the party that wants to leave it the Lib Dems, late of the Coalition, to remove the failed racist rabble-rouser, Zac Goldsmith, from Parliament, but which would not mind if they failed to do so.

One is the party that wants to save the beautiful South of England from fracking, HS2, and a third runway at Heathrow.

The other is the party that wants to despoil irreparably the beautiful South of England by means of fracking, HS2, and a third runway at Heathrow.

One is the party that respects the outcome of the EU referendum, even without necessarily expecting awfully much ever to come of it.

The other is the party that wants to re-run the EU referendum until the plebs give the right answer, and which is in the meantime prepared to give a free pass to the unprepared Prime Minister, to her buffoonish Foreign Secretary, to her honourable but over-promoted Brexit Secretary, and to her morally repugnant International Trade Secretary.

One is the party that is delighted that the EU referendum result has made the focus of political attention the areas that voted Leave while voting Labour, to the extent that even a Conservative Government will actively pay Nissan to employ people in Sunderland, with many more such examples doubtless on their way.

The other is the party that is horrified both at the Nissan deal, and at the notion that the slightest political attention ought to be paid to the areas that voted Leave while voting Labour, areas that that party routinely purports to represent in Parliament and in local government.

One is the party that will support Theresa May against many of her own side, and which will press her to deliver, on workers' and consumers' representation in corporate governance, on shareholders' control over executive pay, on restraining pay disparities within companies, on an investment-based Industrial Strategy and infrastructure programme, on greatly increased housebuilding, on action against tax avoidance, on banning tax-avoiding companies from public contracts, on capping energy prices, on banning or greatly restricting foreign takeovers, and on an inquiry into Orgreave.

The other is the party that will vote with the Conservative Hard Right against each and every one of those measures.

One is the party that has always wanted to take back the rail franchises into public ownership as and when they came up for renewal.

The other is the party that now pretends always to have been of that view, but which in reality used to scream abuse at those of us who dared to express it.

One is the party that fought tooth and nail against the Blair Government's assault on civil liberties, an assault that had begun under the previous Conservative Government, before any thought of Islamist terrorism.

The other is the party that still yearns for identity cards and for 90-day detention without charge, and which conspires with the Conservative hangers and floggers to give the Chair of the Home Affairs Select Committee to Yvette Cooper.

One is the party that always opposed the failed austerity programme of the sacked George Osborne.

The other is the party of the only people who still think that that programme was correct.

One is the party that has opposed every British military intervention of the last 20 years.

The other is the party of the only people who still defend each and every one of those interventions.

One is the party that stands outside Durham County Hall in protest at the bailing out of Durham County Cricket Club while all 2700 Teaching Assistants are to be sacked at Christmas and then reappointed on a 23 per cent pay cut.

The other is the party that wallows inside Durham County Hall or in a private box at the Riverside, bailing out Durham County Cricket Club while sacking all 2700 Teaching Assistants at Christmas in order to reappoint them on a 23 per cent pay cut.

One is the party of Jeremy Corbyn.

The other is the party of Neil Fleming, the Labour Party's Acting Head of Press and Broadcasting.

Neil Fleming, who is evidently engaged in deliberate sabotage on behalf of his own Nasty Party of Daniel Blake-persecuting, Saudi Arabia-arming, NHS-privatising, byelection-fixing, South-despoiling, democracy-scorning, heartland-hating, One Nation-opposing, railway-lying, liberty-destroying, austerity-promoting, genocide-defending combinations of Ebenezer Scrooge and Andrew Cunningham.

Neil Fleming, who has called me a "Mulatto" for over a decade (does Clive Lewis or Chuka Umunna know that?), and who arranged for there to be no selection meeting in this ward in 2003, lest the then Government Chief Whip, Hilary Armstrong, suffer the indignity of a mixed-race District Councillor in her constituency.

Neil Fleming, who then had himself made Chairman of Lanchester Parish Council, on which he was an extremely recent arrival, again in order to stop me on frankly racist grounds.

Neil Fleming, who as an employee of the then Government Chief Whip, Hilary Armstrong, conspired to have me murdered, leading to an attempt on my life by his sister's then boyfriend, who is now his brother-in-law and, terrifyingly, the father of two children.

Neil Fleming, who with his concubine attended Midnight Mass here in Lanchester, leading to an email from me to Iain McNicol complaining at such racist and disability-based harassment, with the result that they have never been back. Merry Christmas.

And Neil Fleming, whose concubine cannot be of any remaining interest to him, since that son of hers must by now be about 18.

The move was backed by a
deeply slanted UN security council resolution, which the Saudis and other
regional monarchies took a leading role in drafting, and which was then
rubber-stamped by their western allies.

The cost of the blockade imposed on Yemen, the region’s
poorest country, by the Saudis and their oil-rich friends, was dramatically
illustrated on the front page of The Times on Friday, in a shocking photo of 18-year-old Saida Ahmad
Baghili, whose body is so emaciated that one can scarcely believe she’s alive.

Baghili lives near Hodeida, where a third of local infants suffer from acute
malnutrition, and where residents were reduced to eating grass and drinking
seawater after the coalition bombed Hodeida itself, Yemen’s major entry point
for aid and food imports.

UN officials report that
the coalition often blocks or delays deliveries of even explicitly UN-approved
food and medical supplies.

All sides in the conflict have been guilty of siege
tactics and indiscriminate attacks on civilians, but the coalition is
responsible for the vast majority of the suffering, and the coalition is the
side that Britain is actively supporting.

Indeed, Whitehall has approved £3.3bn
of arms exports (including bombs and missiles) to Saudi Arabia since
the intervention began, a huge rise on the equivalent preceding period.

So you might think the Labour leadership’s
demand that British support should be suspended, until the Saudis can be shown
to be acting in accordance with international law and basic morality, would be
an uncontroversial one.

Apparently not.

Presenting the motion in the
Commons, Thornberry was subjected to a series of ill-judged interruptions from
Labour MPs such as Kevan Jones, Toby Perkins and John Woodcock.

Indeed,
Thornberry received more vocal support in the chamber from the SNP contingent
than from her own supposed comrades.

According to subsequent
reports, some Labour members even tried to work with their Tory
counterparts in order to defeat their own party’s motion.

Woodcock, a former chair of Progress, claimed that British
support is “precisely focused on training Saudis” to improve their targeting,
so as to “create fewer civilian casualties”, parroting the official government
line.

The idea that the Saudis’ “widespread and systematic” attacks on civilian
targets are just a series of well-meaning errors is one that, to put it as
gently as possible, lacks credibility.

And if decades of training provided by
the British to the Saudi pilots hasn’t prevented these supposed errors by now,
it seems rather unlikely that it will in the near future.

For those who have worked in
housing, homelessness and advocacy, Ken Loach’s latest film, I, Daniel Blake
will seem more documentary than fiction.

The two
protagonists are both subject to arbitrary and damaging periods of extreme
poverty after their benefits are stopped.

Daniel – a 61-year old joiner recovering
from a heart attack and rejected for Employment Support Allowance (ESA) – is
hit by the bedroom tax after the death of his wife, while Katie, a young single
mother with two children, is evicted after complaining about the black mould in
her flat that hospitalises her son.

After a year in a hostel in London, she is
shunted far from her family to Newcastle and after getting the wrong bus during
their first days in the city, is sanctioned for turning up slightly late to a
benefits appointment.

Neither of
these tales is unusual given the intense focus on lowering the number of people
on Jobseekers Allowance and ESA, and both sanctions, and the ludicrous
telephone assessment for ESA that Daniel undergoes, are arbitrary measures
focused not on helping individuals but on cutting expenditure while hitting
targets.

But
critics from a certain political bent have found it unpalatable.

If the film
causes discomfort, perhaps your political system should be the target of your
ire rather than a director and the screen representation of thousands of near
identical stories across the country.

It
takes a special arrogance for people who have never sat in a foodbank or been
near a job centre to proclaim that these cases are unrealistic.

Poverty and,
by extension, the benefits system, together work to instil shame and isolation
in those subjected to such miseries.

Political and media narratives reinforce
the idea of people in need as architects of their own misfortune and to blame
for the fact that they’ve fallen through the cracks.

But there simply aren’t
enough houses and jobs available to end homelessness and reach full employment
overnight.

Rather than admit this, and work to ensure that there is a safety
net for people who are sick, homeless and unemployed, lives are instead treated
as a problem on a balance sheet.

If you sanction enough claimants,
withdraw employment support allowance, and shift people from temporary
accommodation in the cities where they’ve always lived to towns far away, the
issue is deemed solved.

That people are left reliant on foodbanks, living
without electricity and forced to sell furniture simply to feed their children
because they’ve been sanctioned is ignored.

Instead, the fact that someone who
once claimed Jobseekers Allowance or ESA has been sanctioned is offered as
proof not of a dysfunctional system arbitrarily aiming to meet targets, but of
the claim that those left with no support were gaming the system and not
entitled to support in the first place.

I, Daniel
Blake is an uncomfortable film for anyone to watch, but more so if you are
intent on disregarding the experiences it presents.

If you believe that too many
people would rather claim benefits than work, being forced to confront the
human fallout of the system doesn’t sit comfortably with you.

Facts can be
inconvenient in that way: the film is meticulously researched and each scene
has played out in countless lives around the country.

I report regularly on
poverty, and have visited many houses where the residents are embarrassed to
admit they can’t offer you a cup of tea as there’s nothing in the meter – and
many people who visit foodbanks are dizzy with hunger.

I watched this film with
a friend, who works in the housing benefit department of a London council, and
he remarked that he’d seen it all before.

People who disregard Loach’s film
as unrealistic proselytising might do well to spend some time actually asking
the people affected about their experiences of the labyrinthine housing and
benefits system.

But more than that, they should consider why they’re so
threatened by the stories presented in I, Daniel Blake.

The characters are
people who are rarely represented in the media and often scapegoated and
dehumanised.
Loach
presents his characters as complex but utterly failed by the system that
nominally helps them, stuck in sub-standard homes with no money to pay basic
utility bills, beaten down by shame and punished for fighting for basic rights.

These are the people who are ignored for political expediency – that Loach has
shone a light on the human cost of austerity has rattled the government’s
defenders, but could forge more empathy and understanding among more reasonable
viewers.

It was his second victory by an overwhelming majority in a
year, and it should have given Corbyn uncontested authority.

Yet
he is still regarded with mutinous contempt by a significant proportion of his
own side. They flatly refuse to accept Corbyn’s leadership.

This became clear on Wednesday night,
when more than 100 Labour MPs failed to support a three-line whip on British
policy towards the Yemen.

It was disloyalty on an epic scale.

Corbyn cannot be faulted for calling
a debate on Yemen.

For the past 18 months, Britain has been complicit with mass
murder as our Saudi allies have bombarded Yemen from the air, slaughtering
thousands of innocent people as well as helping fuel a humanitarian calamity.

Corbyn clearly felt that it was his
duty as leader of a responsible and moral opposition to challenge this policy.

He nevertheless bent over backwards to make sure that the Yemen vote was
uncontroversial.

The Labour motion therefore stopped short of calling for the
suspension of arms sales to Saudi Arabia which has been demanded by many
charities and campaign groups.

This is because Corbyn and his
foreign affairs spokeswoman Emily Thornberry were mindful that some Labour MPs
represented constituencies where local jobs depended on the arms industry.

So
they contented themselves with demanding an independent United Nations inquiry
into crimes committed by all sides – not just the Saudis – in this terrible and
bloody conflict.

They reasonably suggested that Britain should suspend support
for the Saudis until this investigation was completed.

Green light to Saudi

This is the position taken by the
bulk of the international community, by all reputable aid agencies and, as far
as I can tell, by almost all ordinary Yemenis.

In her excellent speech on
Wednesday afternoon, Thornberry set out the reasons why the Saudis could no
longer be trusted to investigate their own affairs.

Yet more than 100 Labour MPs – not far
short of half the Labour Party – defied Corbyn.

As a result, Labour’s call for
an independent inquiry was defeated by 283 votes to just 193, a majority of 90.

But for Labour abstainers and absentees, Corbyn’s motion would have been
carried and parliament would have voted for an independent investigation.

The
vote is bound to be interpreted by Saudi King Salman as a vote of confidence in
his deeply controversial assault on the Yemen.

It
will also lift pressure on the Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson as he resists a
growing international clamour for Britain to throw its weight behind an independent
UN investigation.

To
sum up, on Wednesday night, the British parliament sent the green light to
Saudi Arabia and its allies to carry on bombing, maiming and killing.

I have
reported politics from Westminster for almost 25 years and can recall few more
shocking parliamentary events.

Party
of War

Shocking
– but not surprising.

The Yemen vote demonstrates something that has been
apparent ever since the vote on 18 March 2003 to support the invasion of
Iraq: the party of war holds a majority in the Commons.

It
comprises virtually all of the Conservative Party and the Blairite wing of
Labour.

As Nafeez Ahmedwrote in July, there is a
clear and demonstrable connection between the vote for war in Iraq, opposition
to an Iraq inquiry, support for the calamitous intervention in Libya, and
opposition to Jeremy Corbyn.

Ahmed showed the majority of those who
tried to unseat Corbyn last summer were interventionist.

Some 172 supported the
motion of no confidence in Corbyn’s leadership.

By coincidence or not, exactly
the same number of MPs have supported Britain’s calamitous overseas wars.

Now
let’s look at the Labour MPs who put a smile on the faces of King Salman and
Boris Johnson by defying Corbyn’s three-line whip and abstaining in Wednesday
night’s vote: once again we are at least partly talking about a confederacy of
Blairites.

It
turns out that Ann Clywd, who made such a sparkling speech in favour of war
during the 2003 Iraq debate, has abstained over Corbyn’s call for an
independent investigation of Yememi war crimes.

Even
Keith Vaz, who was born in Aden and makes a big deal of his Yemeni antecedents,
defied Labour’s three-line whip and abstained.

It
is important to highlight the fact that some of the most prominent opponents of
Jeremy Corbyn did traipse through the division lobbies with their leader on
Wednesday night.

Alan Johnson, Hilary Benn and Yvette Cooper are just three
examples.

And, of course, the majority of those who abstained on Wednesday were
not in parliament for the Iraq vote in 2003.

The
Neocons and the unforgiven

Nevertheless
there is a telling pattern here.

For the past 15 years, parliament has been
governed by a cross-party consensus in favour of war.

During that period,
Britain has undertaken three major foreign interventions, each one of them
utterly disastrous.

In each one, military success was swiftly followed by
political and, ultimately, state failure.

Despite
the hard-won experience of 15 years, there is still a parliamentary majority in
favour of intervention.

Very few parliamentarians opposed all
these interventions.

Jeremy Corbyn was among them and he has never been
forgiven for it.

This
brings me to the final paradox of Wednesday night’s vote: the intimate
connection between politicians who style themselves as moderate or occupying
the centre ground in Britain and neoconservative policies overseas.

For
the past 20 years, the so-called "modernisers", whether Blair’s
Labour or Cameron’s Conservatives, have been in charge at Westminster.

As has
been well-documented (not least by Labour’s Jon Cruddas), they have hollowed
out British politics through techniques of spin and electoral manipulation.

It
is these same modernisers who have caused havoc in the Middle East, condemning
the region to bloodshed and war.

They were at it again on Wednesday by sending
a signal to the Saudi dictatorship that it was acceptable to carry out its
murderous policies in the Yemen.

The NHS is not open to everyone in the EU. It is rightly open to everyone who is in the United Kingdom when they fall ill.

When Harrison Ford was injured at Pinewood, then was he flown back to the United States for treatment?

Here is the reason why not:

“One of the consequences of the universality of the British Health Service is the free treatment of foreign visitors.

“This has given rise to a great deal of criticism, most of it ill-informed and some of it deliberately mischievous.

“Why should people come to Britain and enjoy the benefits of the free Health Service when they do not subscribe to the national revenues? So the argument goes.

“No doubt a little of this objection is still based on the confusion about contributions to which I have referred.

“The fact is, of course, that visitors to Britain subscribe to the national revenues as soon as they start consuming certain commodities, drink and tobacco for example, and entertainment.

“They make no direct contribution to the cost of the Health Service any more than does a British citizen.

“However, there are a number of more potent reasons why it would be unwise as well as mean to withhold the free service from the visitor to Britain.

“How do we distinguish a visitor from anybody else? Are British citizens to carry means of identification everywhere to prove that they are not visitors?

“For if the sheep are to be separated from the goats both must be classified. What began as an attempt to keep the Health Service for ourselves would end by being a nuisance to everybody.

“Happily, this is one of those occasions when generosity and convenience march together.

“The cost of looking after the visitor who falls ill cannot amount to more than a negligible fraction of £399,000,000, the total cost of the Health Service.

“It is not difficult to arrive at an approximate estimate.

“All we have to do is look up the number of visitors to Great Britain during one year and assume they would make the same use of the Health Service as a similar number of Britishers.

“Divide the total cost of the Service by the population and you get the answer. I had the estimate taken out and it amounted to about £200,000 a year.

“Obviously this is an overestimate because people who go for holidays are not likely to need a doctor’s attention as much as others.

“However, there it is, for what it is worth, and you will see it does not justify the fuss that has been made about it.

“The whole agitation has a nasty taste.

“Instead of rejoicing at the opportunity to practice a civilized principle, Conservatives have tried to exploit the most disreputable emotions in this among many other attempts to discredit socialized medicine.

“Naturally when Britons go abroad they are incensed because they are not similarly treated if they need the attention of a doctor.

“But that also I am convinced will come when other nations follow our example and have health services of their own.

“When that happens we shall be able to work out schemes of reciprocity, and yet one more amenity will have been added to social intercourse.

“In the meantime let us keep in mind that, here, example is better than precept.”

One is the party of Jeremy Corbyn, the party that stands in silent vigil outside Durham County Hall throughout working hours during this half term holiday week.

The other is the party that skulks therein or in its private box at the Riverside, bailing out Durham County Cricket Club while sacking the Teaching Assistants in order to reappoint them on a 23 per cent pay cut.

One is the party of Jeremy Corbyn, the party that last night sought to halt arms sales to Saudi Arabia because of the war in Yemen.

The other is the party of the 98 Labour MPs who abstained, so that the motion was defeated by 90 votes.

One is the party of Jeremy Corbyn, the party that will contest the Richmond Park by-election, one hopes in the person of Barnaby Marder.

The other is the party that expels people for retweeting the Greens, while demanding that Labour give the Liberal Democrats a free run at Richmond Park.

Whereas the real cheering on of the Lib Dems ought to be with a view to the re-election of their members, and of the Independents, on Durham County Council.

Together with the removal of the 57 Nasty Party members who are doing to the Teaching Assistants what Margaret Thatcher did to the miners.

In some places, their removal by Lib Dems. In rather more, their removal by Independents, including those of us who, as supporters of the Leader of the Labour Party, can reasonably claim to be the real Labour candidates.

And their removal by Conservatives in a certain number. The four sitting Conservative Councillors did at least abstain. By all means let them defeat a few members of the Nasty Party.

The aim must be to take Durham County Council to No Overall Control, to put together an administration including everyone apart from the Nasty Party, and to fly the Teaching Assistants' flag from County Hall every day thereafter.

We are trying to persuade Ken Loach to make a film about the Teaching Assistants, of whom he is a firm supporter. What an ending that would be, a shot of their flag's triumphant fluttering over a County Hall liberated from the Nasty Party.

Even if he did not make that film, then someone will. I guarantee it.

Look at the poor press and broadcasting coverage that the party of Jeremy Corbyn receives, and remember that the Labour Party's Acting Head of Press and Broadcasting is the very personification of the Nasty Party.

I was going to write a criticism of Clive Lewis for his absence last night, and for his having joined in the call for a "Progressive Alliance" at Richmond Park.

But Lewis is, as I am, a "mulatto", that being the preferred word of the Labour Party's Acting Head of Press and Broadcasting, who has directed it at me throughout the present century.

Indeed, he has a directed a good deal worse than that at me during the present century.

Now living in London, he is easily as racist as Zac Goldsmith, and he is a threat to the physical safety of a very high proportion, perhaps even the majority, of the population of that world city.

Wednesday, 26 October 2016

Yet, or perhaps therefore, she sincerely believes that until she panned it behind a paywall, no one had ever heard of the winner of this year's Palme d'Or, the superlative I, Daniel Blake.

Does she know what the Palme d'Or is? Until this week, had she ever heard of Ken Loach? I do not ask these questions rhetorically.

Still, I am not aware of any suggestion that Long was admitted to Oxford only after her father had telephoned the place to insist.

She, after all, is a proper toff whose admission was strictly by hereditary right. The spawn of a mere Fabian grandee was, and is, Toby Young.

There is all the difference in the world between "You'd get in if your Daddy asked specifically" and "You'll get in because you were born to get in."

Both Young and Long see it as self-evident that because they do not know any people like the characters in I, Daniel Blake, then such people cannot possibly exist in real life.

Both Young and Long see it as self-evident that because Britain is a very rich country overall, then it cannot contain any abjectly poor people, not even those who have been sanctioned for the purpose in pursuit of a target.

And both Young and Long see it as self-evident that because I, Daniel Blake does not resemble the execrable Benefits Street, then it cannot be an accurate portrayal of even such relative poverty as they might be prepared to concede, very grudgingly indeed, might exist "Up North".

Young is clearly fishing for a spot on the Question Time panel next to Loach tomorrow. He must not get one. Nor ought he to be allowed to settle for The Agenda with Loach next week.

And for all the sheer comedy value of hearing Long's political opinions, that temptation, too, must be resisted.

The opposition Labour Party is to use a debate in the British parliament on Wednesday to call the Conservative government to account over British support for the Saudi-led coalition in Yemen.

Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn has called a full-scale "Opposition Day" Commons debate into atrocities committed by all sides in the civil war in Yemen.

Corbyn's intervention comes in the wake of a recent Saudi coalition attack on a funeral in the Yemeni capital, Sanaa, which killed more than 140 mourners.

Corbyn has ordered the debate as the blanket support offered by Britain and America for Saudi Arabia has become hard to defend in the face of repeated atrocities apparently carried out by the Saudi-led coalition.

The shadow foreign secretary, Emily Thornberry, will use the debate to demand an independent investigation into violations of international humanitarian law by all sides in the Yemen conflict.

It will, however, stop short of demanding a halt to British arms sales to Saudi Arabia.

Britain has sold billions of dollars of weapons to Saudi Arabia as the Yemen war has raged.

The Campaign Against the Arms Trade has won the right for a judicial review of sales to Saudi Arabia, with a hearing expected in February.

A spokesman for Thornberry told Middle East Eye that the purpose of the debate was to put the government on the spot for its reliance on the Saudis themselves to investigate atrocities against civilians.

He said that out of more than one thousand incidents of air strikes on civilian sites, the Saudis have completed reports on just nine.

Speaking on the BBC’s Daily Politics last week, the Middle East minister, Tobias Ellwood, said that the Saudi-led coalition air attack on the Sanaa funeral was a case of "deliberate error" and a "gross breach of standard operating procedure".

A Labour Party spokesman said Elwood's remarks "raised the question of how many other deliberate errors have been going on".

Labour is also likely to try to expose the Tory double standards over Yemen at a time ministers have repeatedly condemned Russian air attacks in the northern Syrian city of Aleppo.

Very rich men who go into politics almost
invariably turn out to be duds.

There are a handful of exceptions
to this rule, such as Michael Heseltine, who made a fortune in publishing
before becoming aTory MP.

However, in my experience, the rule
is immutable when it relates to those who inherited family wealth rather than
made their own successful way in life.

Inevitably, they fail to understand
the daily struggles of voters.

In short, they are spoilt brats,
self-indulgently playing politics because they think they have a God-given
right to rule.

Zac Goldsmith is a prime example of
spoilt brat syndrome.

His father, tycoon-turned-politician Sir James Goldsmith,
sent Zac to Eton for the best start in life.

There is, it must be admitted, no
question that Zac Goldsmith is charming, with an affable self-deprecating
manner.

You can meet plenty of men like him
in London’s clubland, on exclusive golf courses and in overseas tax havens.

Easy-going and none too bright, they live agreeable but empty lives.

Zac Goldsmith, who gives the
impression he’s bestowing a favour on his fellow MPs by joining them in the
Commons, differs from most idle rich in one unusual way.

Along with his wealth, he insists
he is a man of virtue and high principle.

Voters should not be fooled.

It is easy to be as virtuous and
principled as Zac Goldsmith portrays himself to be if you can afford it.

Most Tory MPs are not wealthy
enough to risk their careers by resigning and then standing as an
independent.

To be fair to Mr Goldsmith, he promised in his manifesto last year that he
would precipitate a by-election if a Tory Prime Minister decided to build a
third runway, in support of constituents opposed to extra aircraft noise and
pollution.

Mr Goldsmith is entitled to argue
that he would have been breaking faith with his constituents if he went back on
his promise.

He’s also entitled to argue that this kind of principle is all too rare in the
increasingly sordid world of high politics.

So far, so good!

However, Mr Goldsmith was elected
as an MP on the Tory ticket.

Plenty of other Tory MPs have constituencies close
to the airport.

Yes, Boris Johnson (Uxbridge) and
Justine Greening (Putney) have fought Heathrow expansion, but Mr Goldsmith was
the only one who drew attention to himself by pledging a by-election.

There is, furthermore, a price to be paid for his apparent heroic
self-sacrifice.

That price will not, needless to say, be paid by Mr Goldsmith
himself.

It will be paid by his fellow Tory
MPs, who must now add the challenge of Heathrow to a growing list of issues as
they battle their way through one of the most testing periods in recent
political memory.

Prime Minister Theresa May enjoys a
tiny majority as she fights to press through with Brexit.

At a time when she needs every last
Tory vote in the Commons, Mr Goldsmith has selfishly quit the fray.

To put it brutally, he’s placed his
own vanity above loyalty to his colleagues.

But there is a darker reason why Mr
Goldsmith’s act of treachery is hard to swallow.

Although keen to present himself as
a highly principled moral crusader, it should not be forgotten that last summer
he fought one of the nastiest political campaigns in recent history.

He stood as the Conservative
candidate for Mayor of London against Sadiq Khan, a well-respected Labour MP.
Mr Goldsmith didn’t fight solely on
the issues affecting Londoners, as any decent politician would have done.

Instead, he and his allies targeted
Mr Khan, shamefully trying to exploit his Muslim religion.

Leaflets sent out by Mr Goldsmith’s
campaign accused Mr Khan of being a ‘divisive and radical’ politician — seen as
a coded message directed at those who might be uncomfortable with the prospect
of a Muslim mayor.

These tactics, profoundly at odds
with British tradition of not attacking a rival’s private faith — even
indirectly — were pretty unpleasant and, ultimately, Goldsmith failed.

The Guardian wrote that: ‘Goldsmith
is no decent man of principle. He’s a discredited politician who ran a vile
racist campaign and he deserves only contempt.’

On this occasion, I believe The Guardian was right.

Only two British political
campaigns since the Second World War bear comparison with Zac Goldsmith’s
unscrupulous attempt to capture City Hall.

One was the Bermondsey by-election
of 1983 when Peter Tatchell, the Labour candidate, was relentlessly targeted on
account of his homosexuality.

The other was the Smethwick
campaign in the West Midlands in 1964’s general election, when the Conservative
candidate, Peter Griffiths, campaigned on the disgraceful, racist slogan: ‘If
you desire a COLOURED for your neighbour, vote Labour’.

Griffiths’s revolting campaign was
successful, but he was ostracised by MPs for the rest of his career. Tory MPs
may think Mr Goldsmith should be, too.

Even his much-vaunted green credentials are suspect.

Ten years ago, David Cameron gave
Mr Goldsmith a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity by putting him in joint charge of
a Tory commission to shape its policies on the environment.

However, Mr Goldsmith was too lazy
to take advantage — putting no obvious effort into the task and failing to
force through his green agenda.

Cameron soon abandoned the green
policies that will forever be associated with his egregious Arctic huskies
photo-shoot stunt.

If ever there was a principle for
environmental-campaigner Zac Goldsmith to champion, Cameron’s betrayal of his
green crusade was it.

Yet, as far as we know, there were
no resignation threats.

Maybe Zac Goldsmith didn’t want to rock the boat because, as a fellow Old
Etonian, he was one of Cameron’s allies.

Indeed, it was a result of
Cameron’s backing, that Mr Goldsmith was chosen to fight the prize seat of
Richmond Park — which enjoys a considerable Tory majority — ahead of more
deserving candidates.

Today, Mr Goldsmith has repaid that
privilege by turning on the party which launched his political career.

Ultimately, the livelihood of
millions of British citizens depends on the third runway at Heathrow being
built.

The rest of us should applaud the
decisive act of Theresa May after more than ten years of indecision from the
Blair, Brown and Cameron governments.

Yet, Zac Goldsmith, at Mrs May’s
time of need, has stabbed the Tory Party in the back in a gesture of
grandstanding self-indulgence.